The Sight

The Challenge

The Challenge

IMMERSIVE ENTERTAINMENT

The idea of immersive entertainment is not new; from shadows plays to novels, video games and trans media to virtual reality. It isn’t the technology or medium that makes an experience immersive, it’s a great story.

We define immersive as the emotional "tipping point" where you are so emotionally engaged, everything else disappears. It’s creating invisible blinders. Your senses, emotions and mind are all connected to build the world of the story around you.

Technology can offer us some powerful tools to help create an emotional connection, jump starting you physically into a visceral emotional experience. It does this by physically removing all other surrounding stimulus or often by shocking you into the moment.

Our challenge was to create that same visceral experience without the help of a VR headset or any physical catalyst.

Our charge: Engage fans during the "Long Winter" between seasons

Game of Thrones fans are the best and the worst. They are hyper engaged. You have their undivided attention and love, but it’s a high stakes game.

We knew that we had to make the experience authentic and contextual to the show. To give fans what they wanted before they even thought it existed: a glimpse of what was coming.

After being away from the world of the show for several months, we had to find a way to create that emotional entry point back into the world of GoT…

We extended the world of the show to give the fans the experience of the characters - the power to see the future, or The Sight.

The Strategy

The Strategy

MENTAL MECHANICS

To create that visceral reaction, we had to find a new way to surprise as the emotional point of entry. We turned the audience’s expectations against them. We weaponized time and took away the one thing they wanted to do, watch it again.

We figured out how to shock an "unshockable" audience.

To start, we released a vision of the future on social media, a full 5 months ahead of the season premiere.

Then we promised this power of The Sight to see visions of the future, just like the characters.

But like a dream...you wouldn’t know when it was coming.

We created an in-world experience that immersed fans to that emotional tipping point.

Then we took it all away.

Like a dream, the more minutes of wakefulness you experience the more it recedes into the subconscious.

Links burned immediately upon click and visions had a finite window of time to be viewed once a user clicked "play".

How it worked

How it worked

A TWEET GOES OUT

To start, we released a vision of the future on social media, a full 5 months ahead of the season premiere.

HBO's @GameofThrones twitter account tweets a cryptic message along with a short video... ending with a URL. No explanation was given. The same was done on HBO's GoT Facebook Page.

The initial tweet from @GameofThrones.

End tag on the video leading to ThreeEyedRaven website.

The initial vision.

SIGN UP

THREE EYED RAVEN WEBSITE

Fans were prompted at the website www.threeeyedraven.com to choose between a SMS or Twitter signup in order to receive the still-unexplained power of "The Sight".

At the end of the sign-up process, fans received a message stating:

You now have the power of The Sight. Keep watch for visions of the future.

FAN RESPONSE

VISIONS SENT OUT

Visions were released erratically over a period of 12 weeks. As the Raven brought the visions, it reminded fans that they were fleeting.

We utilized geolocation to ensure that fans would receive different visions than those close to them. This increased conversation/speculation and drove demand. For those that chose not to opt-in to location, we used a randomization algorithm to vary the content that was delivered.

The Response

The Response

THE RESPONSE

To create that visceral connection we had to find a new way to surprise as the emotional point of entry. We turned the audience’s expectations against them, weaponizing time and taking away the one thing they wanted to do: watch it again.

We knew when we sent out the first visions and revealed that they were ephemeral that people would be angry. But it was the best kind of anger. They were frustrated that they were being manipulated, but then wanted us to turn around and do it again. By leaving them wanting more all the time we were able to take a typically negative reaction and turn it into a positive.

The lack of permanence combined with an erratic distribution model created a level of frenetic expectancy and then urgency to experience them before they were gone. We created the response of stunt marketing without the audience knowing when an event would occur.

The natural response is to talk about what you just experienced to preserve it, since you can’t experience it again.

Measurement

1.375 MILLION VISITS TO THREEEYEDRAVEN.COM.

72,000 NEW GAME OF THRONES TWITTER FOLLOWERS.

11,096,413 VIEWS OF VISIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA/YOUTUBE.

46,948,082 TOTAL IMPRESSIONS.

PSYCHOGRAPHICS

By setting out with the intent to make push our fans outside of their comfort zone (and honestly to feel a little violated) it was important to us to be able to measure psychographics more along with traditional analytics. New experiences, need new measurements. We invented new KPIs to help us measure the emotional impact.

A key metric of success is altering a participant’s behavior. We were able to see this take shape as people learned how to interact with the visions. Once they learned the rules of engagement, we saw error rates decrease and participants engage with the content with more immediacy.

Peaks and consistency

Social blooms of roughly 48 hours occurred with each vision release, however beyond that we saw a sustained engagement as people captured the experience of receiving their visions and then published that out consistently over the lifecycle of the experience. Fans also started mimicking the emotional tone of how the content was received by sharing it with immediacy and by any means of capture possible.

The Visions

The Visions

Vision Release One - Jaime

Vision Release One - Arya

Vision Release Two

For the final release we had to up the stakes. The trailer for season 5 had been released and now fans had a much clearer picture of the coming narrative. So we gave fans what we ourselves would find satisfying...a complete scene from the upcoming season.

The Final Release - Jon Snow

The Final Release - Brienne

The Case Study

The Case Study

To engage fans between seasons, we created “The Sight” – an immersive in-world experience.

After releasing a mysterious tweet, fans flocked to www.ThreeEyedRaven.com to receive the power to see the future via SMS or Twitter.

We created an erratic distribution model, utilizing geographical randomization to deliver visions comprised of new and previously unreleased content.

Like a dream, visions were ephemeral – links burned, content was single view and unsharable.

Conversation skyrocketed. By weaponizing time we shocked an “unshockable audience.”